Griffin in Pisa, Italy Day 4 - June 30, 2026
Did I climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Is the Pope a White Sox Fan? You betcha.
Did I body surf in the Ligurian Sea? Does the Pope favor Chicago-Style Pizza? You can count on it.
That’s really all you need to know about today,, but I’m not going to let you off that easy. Here are some details:
The bus took us from out hotel to the tour bus staging area at Pisa, arriving about 9:30. It was practically empty with no more than 20 busses in a lot that would handle four times as many, at least. From there, we took a trolly to the center of town and the complex where the cathedral, baptistery and of course the tower are located. There’s a hospital and a mosuleum that’s part of the complex too. Everything is nestled up against the medieval town wall. Locating the cathedral at the edge of town is a departure from normal medieval practice of putting it smack dab in the center of town. Apparently downtown was too crowded with narrow streets to make it practical..
Location is everything, they say, and that’s true here big time. Turns out the whole complex was built in a low-lying swamp. The baptistery as well as the tower lean because they’re built on soggy ground. It took 177 years, starting in 1173 and three architects to complete the tower. The first guy, seeing the foundation sinking at the early stages of construction, promptly quit, left town and was never seen again. The solution to the tilt was not to start over with a firm foundation but to use pillars of different lengths to make up for the tilt. I know a number of engineers who would shake their heads in disapproval of such a workaround. Fix the problem; don’t paper it over.
It wasn’t until the 1990s that, realizing the tilt was increasing milimeter by millimeter, that they decided to come up with a more permanent fix. The tower was closed from then until 2001.
All eight kids ran up the tower. They met the three oldsters coming down when we were maybe two-thirds of the way up. Oh to be young again. The narrow spiral staircase reached a window every 50 steps or so, convenient places where one could pretend to take pictures while regaining lung function.
We had a very good guide who explained the history and backstory of the cathedral (seat of an Archbishop). She took us into the baptistery, a domed structure where she and Galileo Galilei were baptized. It’s still in use today as a place where infants can be baptized.
Speaking of Galileo our guide was quite vehiment in pointing out that he was born in Pisa. “If anyone in Florence tells you he was born there, he’s a liar.” She failed to point out that in 1564 Pisa was a part of the Duchy of Florence. There’s a fierce rivalry between the two. “I’m only going to say it once, but that door of the cathedral was done by an artist from Florence. After that, I’m not going to mention it again.”
Galileo was nodding off during a church service in the cathedral one Sunday and, bored to death, he observed the movement of a chandelier swaying back and forth in the breeze From this he devised experiments that showed that the length of time required by a pendulum to complete and arc did not vary no matter how big the ark was. One hundred years later this principle led to the invention of a clock.
Some claim that Galileo dropped two objects of different mass from the leaning tower and observed that they fell at the same speed, hitting the ground at the same time. Newton fleshed this concept out much later.
Galileo most famously showed that the earth revolves around the sun. Church doctrine said that the earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. For his trouble, he was convicted by the Inquisition and sentenced to life at house arrest. It took 300 years, into the 20th century, before the Catholic Church reversed its position on the matter and exonerated Galileo.
Lunch was on our own and somehow our group of eight managed to while away the hour eating pizza in a restaurant with gentle breezes and pretty good pizza cooled off with milk shakes and smoothies.
Then 45 minutes on the bus to the beach at Tirrenia. Lots of sand, great waves for body surfing and a shallow bottom that didn’t reach chest height 100 meters or more off shore. The kids had a blast, the oldsters got their feet wet and I and one or two others ventured out further. The temps today are maybe 5 degrees cooler after a thunderstorm last night, which imbibed with the not too cold water was very refreshing.
After a one hour break we walked downtown for a pizza dinner here in Montecatini with fried chicken nuggets, onion rings and fried mozzarella as appetizers. We stopped for gelato on the way back. The oldsters could smell “bed time” but the kids decided to take off for a game of tag that turned into a general run around an open field in the dark.
Tomorrow we’re going to a nearby town for chocolate making and olive oil tasting.
